Caprica Full Series Blu-Ray Video Blocks and Noise

[Jimmers]

I have the complete series box set for Caprica. All of the episodes have intermittent hash, blocks that look like compression artifacts and video noise. This noise is visible to a lesser degree when I play the disks on my Xbox One but seems more pronounced once the MKV files are saved.

I wonder if this is intentional? And if so why? Or do I have a whole set of bad copies.

[Jimmers]

After multiple tries and experiments to resolve this problem using Handbrake, I believe I have found an answer.

While the noise is evident in the original MKV files, I ran Handbrake upscaling 2160p 4k Ultra HD and filters Deblock/Very Strong/Small and Denoise/NLMeans/Strong which had some effect. But there were still areas of the files that still had persistent video noise

But what appears to have cured the garbage was to change the video settings process using Constant Framerate and lower the constant Quality to 20.

The file size is large @ around 6G but that can easily be reprocessed for a lower resolution.

I haven't tried to do this without upscaling yet.

[dcoke22]

I haven't watched Caprica (2010) but I have watched Battlestar Galactica (2004). BSG was intentionally grainy as a stylistic choice. Since Caprica is a spinoff of BSG, it wouldn't surprise me if a similar creative choice was made. I don't think Caprica was as popular as they had hoped, however, so there's a real possibility that the blu-rays were produced on the cheap with little concern for compression artifacts and other unfortunate things.

[Jimmers]

I haven't watched Caprica (2010) but I have watched Battlestar Galactica (2004). BSG was intentionally grainy as a stylistic choice. Since Caprica is a spinoff of BSG, it wouldn't surprise me if a similar creative choice was made. I don't think Caprica was as popular as they had hoped, however, so there's a real possibility that the blu-rays were produced on the cheap with little concern for compression artifacts and other unfortunate things.

I'm familiar with that "style" choice. It is scattered all through BSG 2004. But it's pretty low key and manageable.

But there is so much of this style troweled onto each episode of Caprica as to make it all but unwatchable. The process that I discovered has removed 99% of the noise and makes the video clean.